Washington, Jan 23 (NationPress) Two prominent Democratic lawmakers, including Indian American Pramila Jayapal, have urged Meta and Google to discontinue their digital advertising collaborations with the US Department of Homeland Security. They allege that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has leveraged the platforms of these companies to promote recruitment and “self-deportation” campaigns that utilize imagery and rhetoric associated with white nationalism.

US Representatives Becca Balint, who serves as the vice ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Pramila Jayapal, the ranking member of the House subcommittee responsible for immigration enforcement, sent individual letters to the CEOs of Meta and Google requesting thorough explanations regarding the extent of the companies’ agreements with DHS and demanding a cessation of these advertisements.

The lawmakers asserted that these campaigns are part of a larger strategy to rapidly expand ICE recruitment efforts, including deploying more officers to cities such as Minneapolis, Chicago, Portland, and New Orleans, while also lowering hiring standards in order to meet congressional requirements.

In their correspondence, Balint and Jayapal cautioned that ICE has increasingly turned to paid digital advertising on major platforms to recruit thousands of new agents, arguing that the agency has utilized content associated with white nationalist themes to attract potential recruits.

The letter directed to Google highlighted that DHS has collaborated with the company as part of a widespread campaign that employs propaganda inspired by white nationalism to recruit immigration enforcement agents, urging Google to cease facilitating such practices.

It referenced reports indicating that DHS has allocated over $1 million for “self-deportation” advertisements in the past 90 days and approximately $3 million on Spanish-language ads on Google and YouTube promoting the same agenda. According to the lawmakers, ICE expended a total of $5.8 million on advertisements with Meta and Google last year.

The lawmakers pointed to a recent incident where DHS posted a recruitment advertisement on Instagram featuring the phrase “we’ll have our home again,” which they indicated is derived from a song popularized in neo-Nazi circles and utilized in white nationalist calls for a race war. They noted that similar phrases and imagery have a historical association with neo-Nazi groups.

In their letter to Meta, Balint and Jayapal cited reports indicating that DHS has invested over $1 million on “self-deportation” advertisements aimed at individuals interested in “Latin music,” “Spanish as a second language,” and “Mexican cuisine,” and that the agency has spent millions more to run recruitment ads across Facebook and Instagram. They noted that since August alone, DHS has paid Meta an additional $500,000 for recruitment advertising.

The lawmakers contended that the recruitment initiative coincides with ICE’s decision to lower hiring standards, including waiving age limits for law-enforcement applicants, offering signing bonuses as high as $50,000, and deploying new recruits without thorough vetting or training.

“The repercussions of an unqualified force of ICE agents being deployed across the nation have been dire,” Balint and Jayapal asserted, citing fatalities, unwarranted arrests, mass raids, and a record number of deaths in ICE custody.

The letters also raised concerns about how these advertisements were permitted to run on Meta’s and Google’s platforms, considering the companies’ publicly stated policies regarding hate speech and discriminatory content. The lawmakers requested both companies to disclose the nature and duration of their agreements with DHS, whether the ads align with their internal advertising standards, and whether they have communicated with DHS regarding the content of these campaigns.